The Abe Lieberman Mysteries Series

With his Chicago cops, Edgar Award winner “Kaminsky is hard to beat for a thoughtful, well-plotted, well-written mystery” (The Washington Post Book World).   Most days, the counters at Maish’s Deli on Chicago’s North Side are crowded with elderly Jewish men who trade stories and crack wise. But today, the mood at Maish’s is grim. Someone has vandalized the local temple—the fifth in a row—and stolen a priceless Torah, and only Abe Lieberman can set things right. A veteran cop whose low-key attitude and sardonic humor conceal an intense commitment to justice, Lieberman is taking the break-in very personally—the synagogue’s president just happens to be his wife.   With the help of his lapsed Catholic partner, Bill Hanrahan, Lieberman must straddle the roles of detective and diplomat, tracking down the thugs who defaced the temples while at the same time brokering peace between the North Side’s warring factions before they tear the city apart. Because when it comes to the law, the cop they call “Rabbi” understands that while he may work for the Chicago police department, he also serves a higher authority.   Abe Lieberman is “smart, tough, empathetic, and just a tad crazy when circumstances require.” And Lieberman’s Law “is a wonderfully rich cop novel” (Booklist).

The first novel in a crime series about “two Chicago cops, one Jewish, one Irish . . . Told with deceptive simplicity [and] a gentle wit” (The Boston Globe).   Detectives Abe Lieberman and Bill Hanrahan have been partners a long time—long enough to call each other “Rabbi” and “Father Murphy.” Lieberman is sixty, a grandfather, and a devout Jew. Hanrahan is a lapsed Catholic who’s been hitting the bottle pretty heavily ever since his wife walked out on him. They may be flawed, but they’re good cops. But even good cops have bad days.   On a hot Chicago afternoon, Lieberman would prefer to be watching his beloved Cubs from the bleachers at Wrigley Field instead of sitting in his brother Maish’s deli with Hanrahan, meeting a prostitute and valued informant. But Estralda Valdez needs their protection from a psychotic john, and the partners agree to watch her back on their off-duty time.   That Friday night, while Lieberman is in temple, Hanrahan has the first watch, across the street from Estralda’s apartment in a Chinese restaurant. But while he passes the time with two doubles and flirts with the waitress, the beautiful prostitute is brutally murdered. Tortured by guilt and chewed out by their chief, Lieberman and Hanrahan race against the clock to find the killer. They owe at least that much to Estralda.   Lieberman’s Folly is “first-rate work, featuring characters you can almost touch and streets you can almost walk on, and an expertly plotted story” (The Phildelphia Inquirer).

A Chicago cop is out to avenge his nephew’s murder in this “masterly creation” that puts the Edgar Award–winning author in “the Parker/Paretsky league” (Chicago Tribune). When you’re a sixty-two-year-old cop with bad knees, most days feel pretty long. But the longest day of Abe Lieberman’s life begins just after midnight when he learns his nephew David has been shot dead and David’s pregnant wife has been gravely injured by two gunmen trying to rob the couple. Now Carol is barely clinging to life, and it’s up to Lieberman to track down the killers.   With the help of his partner, the troubled alcoholic Bill Hanrahan, Lieberman will turn the city upside down to find the men who stole his nephew’s bright future. But as they step out into the howling Chicago wind, it’s clear both partners will need to fight to survive the day that started out terrible and is about to get a lot worse.   This day in the life of two veteran Chicago cops is “beautifully rendered . . . Kaminsky is extraordinarily attuned to the domestic minutiae of his detectives’ lives” (The New York Times Book Review).

This Chicago cop drama is “jam-packed with the stuff of good crime fiction—character, style, place, recognizable human conflict” (The Washington Post).   When the wife of a mob witness is killed and his teenage son is kidnapped, the ransom isn’t cash—it’s his life. The dead can’t testify. If the witness kills himself, the mob will let his son live.   Now veteran cops Abe Lieberman and Bill Hanrahan need to protect their witness from himself while they turn Chicago’s gangland upside down to save the kid. It doesn’t help that Hanrahan is newly sober in AA, battling drink urges and the guilt of recently losing another informant. Lieberman has seen his partner at his worst with the booze and always had his back. But now both their backs are against the wall, and they’ll need to rely on each other and make some hard choices to set this one right.   Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America and Edgar Award Winner Stuart M. Kaminsky “has the pro’s knack of combining quirky people, succinct descriptions, an eye for detail, and dark humor to produce entertainment at its best” (Chicago Sun-Times).

An Edgar Award–winning author steals the show again in “a beautifully calibrated mix of wit, suspense, and quiet honesty” (The Washington Post Book World).   It should have been an easy score—a suburban house on a quiet cul-de-sac, with the owners scheduled to be gone all night. But career burglar George Patniks has chosen the wrong time to go breaking and entering, because tonight Harvey Rozier will murder his wife. Patniks is the only witness to the brutal killing, but of course he can’t go to the police.   Wise, world-weary Homicide Det. Abe Lieberman has been lied to a lot in his long career on the Chicago police force. Rozier’s claim of a robbery-gone-wrong just doesn’t add up, but Lieberman needs hard evidence to confirm his gut instinct. Along with his partner, Bill Hanrahan, Lieberman is looking for a break—and he just might get one . . . if the killer doesn’t catch the thief first.   “Outstanding . . . Another stellar performance, alight with menace and compassion.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

A veteran Chicago cop who’s also a mensch, “Lieberman is endearing, wise in his crochets, weary with his wisdom” (The Washington Post Book World).   Thirty-three years ago, Connie Gower pulled a gun in a synagogue. He had come to avenge his brother, a two-bit hoodlum who’d been killed in a shootout with a young cop named Abe Lieberman. But Lieberman outsmarted him, and put Gower in jail. After serving his time, for the next few decades Gower bounced around the Chicago underworld, making a name for himself as a second-rate mob enforcer.   Fate is a funny thing. When Gower gets arrested in Yuma, Arizona, it’s an aged Abe Lieberman who goes to bring him home, leaving his longtime partner Bill Hanrahan back in the windy city to put up with the hot air of his racist substitute. Handcuffed to each other, Lieberman and his prisoner are about to board the plane when a geriatric janitor shuffles towards them and shoots Gower dead.   Connie Gower was scum, but killing him is still murder, and Lieberman is determined to find out who ordered the hit—and why.   Edgar Award winner Stuart M. Kaminsky’s The Last Dark Place is “an entertaining crime novel that should send new readers in search of its predecessors” (Publishers Weekly).

Two Chicago cops need to defuse an explosive situation in this “tightly plotted” police procedural (Chicago Tribune).   After killing his wife and her lover, an unhinged and heavily armed Chicago cop named Bernie Shepard barricades himself at the top of a high-rise apartment building and sends a message to the police: meet his demands, or he’ll detonate enough explosives to blow the whole block sky high.   If it’s a choice between chewing the fat at his brother Maish’s deli or hunting down armed lunatics, world-weary veteran cop Abe Lieberman knows where he stands. But no one’s giving him a choice. It’s up to Lieberman and his longtime partner, Bill Hanrahan—aka the Rabbi and Father Murphy—to play Bernie’s game, betting their lives on a madman’s whim.   With a crazed cop holding “enough explosives to blow the North Side of Chicago to kingdom come . . . Kaminsky mines plenty of suspense” (The New York Times Book Review).